Computer Handyman

None of my Apple devices would connect to iTunes on my Windows PC.  Apple help on the PC and the official Apple help sites on the web were also of no use.  This site, however, had the solution to my problem, which was to install the Apple USB driver. http://www.syncios.com/fix-itunes-not-recognize-iphone-ipad.html As it suggested, my Apple device was improperly located under Mobile Devices in the Windows Device Manager. It should be been under the USB list. I followed the instructions and it worked. Thank you. I did later find it in an Apple discussion here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4066236  

Sometimes Chrome will interfere with administering a WordPress blog. As an extra level of protection, WordPress sometimes adds a login that prevents machines from logging in. Before it lets you enter your real user ID and password, it will present a login screen and text that tells you what to fill in. Usually the login is just random letters and numbers, and the password is often expressed as the total of a sum of two numbers, so that the actual password number does not appear in the text. Chrome does not display the page with the text and login screen. It simply displays a message saying that your login is not private. One solution to this is to login with another browser, like Firefox, with displays the page of additional security. Write down the ID and password, and you may be able to use it to log in via Chrome, although that pages does not appear. You enter the WordPress generated info on the first screen, and if you are lucky Chrome will then take you to real login screen.

The HomeGroup networking program in Windows 10 needs some work. It is a good idea which makes networking home computers much easier that networking them the old fashioned way. However, it looks like HomeGroup runs into trouble when the original PC on which it was set up leaves the network, and nobody knows the old password. When you try to start up a HomeGroup connection or add a new PC to the HomeGroup, the program says that there is a group that you can join, but then it says the link fails. If you try to leave the old network and create a new one, you can’t. There are a number of suggestions about how to resolve this problem in chatrooms and on websites offering advice on Windows. Usually you can get HomeGroup working again, but not easily. One approach that seems to work sometimes, but not always, is to turn off all the computers on the network except one. Tell it to leave the HomeGroup, and then try to create a new HomeGroup. The trouble that often occurs is that it won’t let you ...

My Dell 8300 i7 computer with Windows 10 Home began freezing up periodically. It began freezing up once every two or three days, but gradually it began freezing up more frequently, sometimes several times in one day. The only way to turn it off was to hold the power switch down until the power supply turned off. Then, when it rebooted, the various drives would need to be repaired by Windows. After the hard drives were repaired it would work fine until it froze up again. Sometimes as it would start to freeze up, I could close a few open windows, but I could seldom get it to shut down using the Windows software. I ran every hardware test I could find, and they all said the hardware, including the motherboard, the hard drives, the graphics card, and the memory were fine. I got no errors, but when it started to freeze up, I could not start up the hardware tests. Since the hardware seemed to be okay, I decided it must be the software, probably Windows. I thought maybe Windows had been damag...

Apple should be willing to help the US government access information on the iPhones of terrorists and other criminals. I do not think that anyone living under a democratic government has an absolute right to inviolable privacy. If someone’s home is subject to a search warrant issued by a proper judicial process, his other possessions should also be subject to search when properly approved. Apple refuses toallow any search and seizure, even when there is probable cause as determined by a court of law. While the Fourth Amendment is explicitly a protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the implication is that the government should be allowed to carry out searches and seizures when there is probable cause. I think that some of the technical objections to requiring breakable encryption on private phones could be overcome by requiring that decrypting the information could be done only by physically connecting to the phone. This could mean that some sophisticated decryption devi...

The Windows 10 calendar reminder window has become very annoying.  At some point it downloaded the birthdays of everybody I knew on Facebook.  Now Facebook has apparently disconnected Windows/Microsoft from Facebook, so that the birthdays are now stored in some mystery calendar file.  But Windows 10 desktop keeps reminding me of them, every five minutes, and telling the reminder to dismiss does not help.  It just comes back over and over and over again.  And you can't delete the calendar entry, because it's not in a normal calendar.  The engineers at Microsoft are surprisingly stupid, despite doing a much better job in general on Windows 10 than on any previous version.

Quicken 2016 running under Windows 10 does not reconcile accounts correctly.  When you try to check or uncheck a transaction in the list displayed by Quicken, the balance does not update.  Sometimes if you exit reconcile and enter again, it will update.  Sometimes clicking "Mark All" will help.  But it doesn't work correctly.  The Quicken community says this is a known issue, but has not been fixed, yet.

Microsoft HomeGroup does work after all.  After days of trying off and on to get HomeGroup to work with my home network computers, I discovered that the problem was my router.  It was not the computers or the software.  My CenturyLink ZyTEL PK5001Z DSL modem and router was not configured for the IPv6 Internet protocol.  Apparently HomeGroup requires that its network use IPv6, rather than the old IPv4 protocol. Instructions on how to enable IPv6 on the CenturyLink PK5001Z modem can be found here.  http://internethelp.centurylink.com/internethelp/modem-pk5001z-ipv6rd.html After I enabled the IPv6 protocol on the router, rebooted the computers and waited for a while, the option to create a HomeGroup suddenly appeared on a laptop computer.  The option to create a HomeGroup had not appeared since the major Windows 10 update.  The only option had been to join an existing HomeGroup, and after a long pause, Windows would say that the HomeGroup it was trying to join no longer existed, but it st...

After installing a major Windows 10 update a few days ago, Microsoft HomeGroup, which had been working, ceased to work.  It says there is a HomeGroup invitation, but there is none, or it is from a computer that is no longer on the network.  After trying to join for many wasted minutes, it says there is no HomeGroup to join, and says to go to HomeGroup and create a new HomeGroup, but there is no option to create a new HomeGroup, only to join an existing HomeGroup, which Microsoft says does not exist.  Catch-22. When you run the HomeGroup troubleshooter, it says there is a network protocol missing, but without HomeGroup, networking works perfectly, with file exchanges among all the computers on the network.  So the network seems fine.  HomeGroup is messed up. The Microsoft website is useless.  It simply says create a new HomeGroup, but that is impossible because there is no option to do so. There is no option to leave a HomeGroup, since Windows thinks the PC does not yet belong to a Home...